Deduction
by Ranima
Summary: Blaze Hawkes holds a significant secret, she herself tries to hide and forget. But her secret might be revealed if she's not extremely careful around Conan while getting whirled up in many cases of murders and robberies. What's her secret she tries to hide as much as to move to Japan? Rated T for mentions of death and just to be sure.
1. Blaze Hawkes

**(A/N) Hello! It's Ranima and yeahhh ... This, is my first fanfic ever, soo there ought to be some mistakes or jammy points (and so on), but 'll try to improve myself! At the moment, I own only three of the characters. Blaze Hawkes and Moritaka Rin and that Himura-kun ( I don't think he'll ever get a first name :P ) Wellp! Please, review of the pros and cons of this chapter! Thank you! :3**

* * *

A short girl stood calmly at the airport. Fixing the hang she had from her red bag, she slightly leaned to her chubby, mid-forties mother. At first she had observed the surrounding people at the scene, but soon she looked away into the horizon.

The girl stared up the sky with her slightly heterochromatic brown eyes. She gazed to the golden sunset from the airports huge parking lot. The orange thick light caressed her bright red hair. Her pale skin had gotten a slight tan from the sun.

The flame-haired girl was a 17-year-old student, who just now moved to Japan with her small and busy family. She had moved to the country she had only thought about in her most ridiculous daydreams. She loved the food and culture the country had to offer and could already smell the slight smell of oden coming from a small shop when she had stepped out of the suffocating plane.

Her head was still in the clouds, but the heat was about to bring her down faster than the gravity. She still felt a bit too hot in her favourite white-laced blue top and her new brown shorts even though she had just changed from her gray hoodie and black college pants in the airport toilet.

Soon, the yellow airport-taxi rolled around and the father in his black business suit hurried his sleepy wife and daughter to sit inside the hot car. In no time, the family found themselves on the sturdy front door of their new western styled mansion. Nervously glancing at his expensive wristwatch, the father carried most of the luggage while his family only took their back- and handbags inside.

It was a normal sunny and warm morning of the latter days of May of school for most of the students of the Teitan High, but for Blaze Hawkes it was one of the most exciting moments ever. Or rather, one of the most horrible. She was still yet to decide, but when she noticed her classmates stared at her hair when she stepped into her new classroom she was starting to rapidly swing to the latter. Though she had even braided her long hair that morning, she still felt awkward of its bright flaming color.

"'Why does the uniform have to be blue? To bring out my hair even more?' she cursed to herself while standing there, in the front of the class.

Luckily, the color difference in her irises wasn't so obvious to notice from these distances. Blaze hated being the center of attention at times and this was one of those times.

" Okay now, class. This is the new transfer student ", started the old male-teacher and wrote her name on the board lazily.

" Yes, she is a foreigner ", a boy raised his hand near the windows, " no, you can't go to toilet, Himura-kun. You can sit next to Suzuki-kun, Hawkes-kun. Class starts now ", he said with the same monotonic, boring voice. Blaze searched the classroom for this 'Suzuki-kun' with her eyes. A girl with a short, brown and neatly combed hair waved to her in the middle of the class and pointed to the empty desk next to her.

'I bet, she's Suzuki.'

Blaze tried to listen to the teacher, but during the lesson she could feel everyone staring at her. Some with more or less friendly eyes. She felt very, very awkward and nervous.

When the lesson ended forty minutes later, Blaze had her desk surrounded with almost all of the girls of the class. All of those who were looking at her with those less friendly eyes. A few of them were touching her hair and the others bombarded her with questions, such as :

'Why did you color hair' and 'does it take long to comb such long hair' and more.. Blaze started to feel the incoming headache warningly pound in the back of her head.  
" Hey girls, the next class is starting " one of the boys noted from the door and blocked the questions. Blaze sighed in relief.

' I owe that boy one', she thought gratefully when she escaped to the next subjects classroom.

* * *

' Well, sure today was a bit exhausting, but maybe tomorrow might be a bit better?' Blaze thought to herself trying to encourage herself, when the bell rang to start the time of her golden freedom. The morning had been so sunny and lovely and bright, but now it was all cloudy and cold. Just like her mood.

She packed her books into her bag with a sigh. Noticing from the corner of her eye someone walking next to her she turned her head.

"Hey Hawkes-san, where do you live? We could walk you home, since you just moved here, right? " a girl with a long, dark hair said with a smile. Suzuki and some other girl with a short, black and messy hair were standing behind her with a friendly smile too. The clouds in Blazes head swayed away quickly. Unfortunately they didn't do so outside.

" S-sure ", she said, still a bit unsure of how to answer. Blaze took her bag and joined the three to go home.

"Oh yeah, we haven't introduced ourselves properly now have we? " the one with the messy hair asked, when they were walking in the schools hallway.

" I'm Sera Masumi! Nice to meet ya!", she continued.

"She's also the best detective of our class now that Kudou's disappeared! " Suzuki said with a laugh. Blaze felt a bit tense and repeated the word :

" Disappeared?"

"Oh don't worry, he's just away for a while somewhere! Jeez, Sonoko, don't go saying such disturbing things!" the one with the long hair scolded. She then turned to Blaze and introduced the two of them.

"This is Suzuki Sonoko and I am Mouri Ran."

" Mouri? Then do you know the detective Sleeping Kogorou?" Blaze reacted to the name.

"Well, ye- ", Ran didn't have the time to end her sentence when Sonoko butted in.

"Actually that old pervert and drunkard is our Rans father!" Blaze gave a laugh to the description Sonoko gave of the renowned detective. There's no way the detective she admired would be like that, right?

"Is it true?" Blaze asked. She was awed, since she had always wanted to meet the great detective.

"True as I am! You might see him someday if you're lucky!" Masumi exclaimed with a laugh.

"Well, if it's on a crime scene, then I bet you aren't that lucky", Sonoko said and grinned when Ran hit her head.

"Well, then, where did you live again, Hawkes-san?" Ran asked her when they reached the old school gates.

"Just Blaze is fine, that's what I was called back in Britain", Blaze noted and continued, "let me see, no one will be home today, so mom told me to go to this person … " She dug her phone from her dark-blue school-bag. She opened her memo-app and read;

" My home is on the 5th Street of Beika, but this should be the address of my mothers pen-pal", she added and showed her phone.

"Yeah, we know where this is, don't we?" Ran said.

"I don't. It's a bit too far from my apartment", Masumi said, "I guess I'll be going straight home then", she continued.

"Okay, see you at school tomorrow", Sonoko waved and Ran added :

" Yeah, see you tomorrow, Sera-san!"

"Goodbye, Masumi-san", Blaze said politely and continued with the other two when Masumi continued to the opposite direction.  
The girls chatted cheerfully on their way to the small apartment house near the Mouri Detective Agency. They talked about random things and to Blazes misfortune she still got bombarded with questions of the foreign lifestyle.

* * *

The sky was already starting to turn to the shades of orange through the cloudy layer when they knocked on the door of Blazes mothers friend. It was already the fifth time they had tried.

"Gee, why isn't anyone answering?" Sonoko complained with a childish tone, "it's not so late for her to go to sleep!"

"Hey, could you give this friend a call or anything? If you have that persons number?" Sonoko asked again aiming the question to Blaze.

"I need to go home soon too. I guess his starving",Ran added in and looked at the time from her phone

"Sorry, guys, for holding you up. Don't worry, I'll get a key from the office two floors down if she doesn't answer", Blaze said awkwardly.

"Sorry, Blaze-san, but I'm getting hungry. So I guess I'll be going home now", Sonoko told her good-byes and was soon joined by Ran.

Blaze sighed and read the memo again. She found a little mention of that the friends name. Moritaka Rin.

'A pretty normal name.'

She called the number her mother had left her, but it went to Rins voice-mail after a minute.

"Tch", Blaze muttered.

'It's going to be a pain getting in now.'

She dragged herself downstairs to the landlords apartment house. She knocked and when the old, wrinkly man in his pajamas opened the door she could smell the scent of tobacco from all over his home.

'Youck!'

She felt like she was interrogated forever after she had asked for the master-key. The clock was already past 6.30pm when she got back upstairs and with the help of the holy master-key, she could finally open the door to the pen-pals apartment.

It was already the time when the streets were already starting to cram up from the people going home from work.

"Hello? Uh... Moritaka-san? Moritaka Rin-san? Are you here? " Blaze called after she had locked the front door. She took off her shoes and stepped further into the tidy apartment.

"Moritaka-san? It's me Blaze. Blaze Hawkes", she tried again.

'I wonder if she's still at work.'

She walked through the apartment, but didn't open any doors since she didn't want to see anything she shouldn't so that Moritaka-san wouldn't get mad at her.

The apartment was clean and tidy though some spots were a bit messy. And ugly. She hated the dull colors of dirty red and moldy brown.

There were a lot of thick books and clothes left on the floor almost giving the house a new floor and in the kitchen sink there still were some dishes and leftovers. She had to refrain herself of throwing up when she checked inside the garbage bin.

The only door she opened, was the door to the balcony. She stood there for a minute enjoying the breeze. She couldn't see much of a scenery for she was surrounded by other tall buildings.

Blaze went to sit into the kitchen and even though she was really hungry, she couldn't eat anything because Moritaka-san might get angry. Or something. Just to be sure. It's not really fun to spend the night with a stranger who's mad at you.

So she chose the safer option; to go watch the TV.

She watched a few episodes of some boring soap-dramas, but after the third one ended, she was starting to get nervous. She glanced at the big old clock ticking loudly on the wall. It was already 7.40pm. Shouldn't the pen-pal be here already? Only my parents have work until nine or so pm.

She started to seriously feel the hunger. And the need to use the toilet.

She stood up from the ugly wine-red sofa ignoring the growls her hungry stomach sent her and began the mission of "Find the toilet ASAP".

She opened one door carefully, but it showed nothing but a utility room and a shower.

'So close, but I really want to use a real toilet.'

What was behind the next door she opened, was a bedroom with one thick mattress on the floor. Blaze supposed that Moritaka-san had put it there for her sometime earlier. Maybe yesterday or this morning? She closed the bedroom door and went to the next one.

She opened the beige door, expecting to see the holy and welcomed image of a toilet, but what she saw made her let out a high-pitched shocked scream. She saw the contents of the third room. She saw them too well.

Sure it was a normal office-room, with gray walls, a tall brown bookshelf filled with boxes (and more books), a desk and a computer on top of it. Some blue folders scattered here and there and nice rug on the floor. It was a nice, ordinary office room and almost everything fit together.

The only thing that didn't fit there was the hanged corpse in the middle of the very room hanging from the roof. The corpse of a person she had seen in a photo once before.

The corpse of Moritaka Rin.

* * *

**(A/N) Well hello there. Did you like the chapter, my dear very few possible readers? :3 And sorry, it's really short :/**

**Oh, and the reason I'm referring to Sera with her given name Masumi, is because Blaze is a kind of a new character who doesn't really know how Ran and Sonoko refer to her. And since she calls Ran Ran and Sonoko's Sonoko, with all logic in her mind Sera Masumi is Masumi. I'll introduce the suspects in the next chapter and of course, our little chibi-detective has a small part in it. Look forward to it, review and thank you! And it might take a while since I need to edit it a bit... I'll try to be quick!**  
**-Ranima-**


	2. Clues

Blaze fell to her knees when she saw the brown-haired corpse hanging in the middle of the room. She was wearing a nice blue dress and on top her brown bouncy curls was a blue ribbon. That was very pretty, but her face was awful. It wasn't pale and pretty and peaceful like the TV showed. Her face had a horrified look and her empty, black eyes succesfully enhanced the creepy effect. She had some drool on her chin and the brisket of her dress had a few drops of blood on it.

"Oh god... " she whispered faintly and crawled backwards a bit, still staring at the lifeless woman.

'Oh god! What the _heck_? Oh yeah, an ambulance! I need to call the ambulance immediately!' she thought frantically.

Blaze rose on to her feet a bit too quickly which almost made her stumble into the room. Her feet were wobbly like jelly, but when she stabilised herself a bit she could run to the front door. She had left her school bag with her phone seconds later grabbing her blue bag she zipped it open forcefully.

The Blaze right now didn't care if the bag might break in the process. She searched for the phone frantically, but then hastily decided to take everything out to find it sooner.

'Oh god. Oh god. Oh god', went her mind around. Sure, she had seen and solved some small-scale robberies before and those mysteries on the TV, but this was the _first_ time she had seen a corpse.

_A corpse. A dead body of a person. An ex-live person._

She was shocked and panicking. Her shaking hands tried to call the emergency number, but instead of calling or even typing the number, she froze. She sat there on the floor as still as a rock as the realization slowly crept on her already shocked face.

'_I don't know the japanese emergency number!_'

Her busy father had never told her the emergency number of Japan, since he had thought his clever and mature daughter wouldn't be able to get in trouble this soon. Not at her age anymore. The girl cursed to herself for knowing the emergency numbers for almost every country in Europe and USA, but _not_ knowing any of them in Asia.

'Who do I call now?' she thought desperately. She went through her contacts on her phone, but all she had were her parents numbers. And _they_ were at work. At a conference in Osaka. Definetely not going to help right now.

In the middle of the mess of her school books and handouts on the floor, she saw the small and crumbled handwritten "business" card, which Masumi had written for her. Or Sonoko, it was Sonoko who had given it to her on their way here.

'Better than nothing.'

Blaze picked up the card and typed the number written on it into her phone. She then pressed 'call' and hoped from the bottom of her heart that it would actually connect somewhere useful.

"Hello? This Sera Masumi", Masumi answered after a few toots.

"I need help Masumi! I found Moritaka Rin and she's dead!" Blaze cried to her friend through the phone.

"What? Come again, what's going on? Who's what?" Blaze heard Masumis confused voice from the other end of her little phone. She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself down to explain.

"There's a corpse at the apartment house where Sonoko and Ran accompanied me to. A hanged body of Moritaka Rin. Moritaka-san is the pen-pal of my mother! I've seen her once from a picture mom showed me so I'm _sure_! I didn't remember her name earlier, but I'm sure that _that_ is... _was_ Moritaka Rin!" she tried to talk slowly, but her voice cracked up near the end and tears started to well up in her brownish eyes. And now that she knew that there was a dead body in the same house with her, she could smell its moldy smell. Blaze held back her vomit and pleaded again:

"Please, just call the ambulance here, please... I'm not feeling good and I didn't know who I should call."

Blaze ended the call before Masumi could answer and grabbed the knob of the front door. She pulled herself up with its help and stayed frozen for a minute. She was breathing fast and she felt a bit weak. She felt like she needed fresh air, but she sure as ever wasn't going to the balcony past the open office room. No, thank you.

Still shaking, she turned the metal knob on the front door. It opened quickly and she almost fell outside the house. Blaze fell down and leaned to the wall next to the her chin up she tried to even her breath. She felt the cold sweat running down her spine and the shivers it sent her made her feel worse. At first she felt like sobbing the shock away, but she really didn't want to. It reminded her too much of _that_ time if she now were to even as much as shed a tear.

Sera Masumi held the phone in her hand in her dark room trying to analyze what her new foreign-friend had just told her. Soon as if something had clicked in her head, she jumped off her bed. She slammed close the book she had been reading and put it on the table. Masumi hoped that her friend was okay, since corpses usually weren't that pretty. She pulled on her black jacket and normal blue jeans from her closet. She then roamed the house for her helmet and motorbike keys. Masumi bursted out of her door. Her shoes were only halfway on and she was so impatient that barely had time to put on the helmet. When the short-haired detective rode out of the hotels parking lot with her bike, she remembered to flip out her phone and call the ambulance. She driving with one hand while explaining the situation to the operatives.

The echo of the sirens soon reached her ears through the ever-darkening evening. She stepped on the gas to go faster. She curved to the parking lot of the apartment house and when she noticed her, ran to Blaze who was sitting on the stairs.

"Are you okay, Blaze?" Masumi asked the depressed red-head and patted her head.

"Been better", she answered shortly, "it's the first time I've ever seen a corpse so... yeah", she continued queitly.

"Know the feel. But where's the victim?" Masumi asked. When Blaze just pointed to the ambulance that had just curved away, she continued, "Okay. What about the crime scene?"

"It's up there. And the medics just called the police for me, so no one can go inside for now. Not until the police detectives come round", Blaze explained with a sigh. Masumi noticed her pale face so she decided to stay with her until the detectives came.

The Detective Boys were just going to Conans home for a sleepover after playing games at Agasas when they noticed police cars curving to an apartment buildings parking lot.

'What's going on there?' the detective with eyeglasses wondered, but continued onward.

"Hey, isn't that Megure-keibu and Takagi-keiji?" Mitsuhiko noticed.

"Yeah, and ain't that Sera-san there at the door?"

"Maybe something happened?" Conan stopped on his heels when he heard those words. Setting a little countdown in his head, he counted from three and when he hit zero:

"Let's go investigate!" the most egotastic of the little detectives claimed.

"Yeah, let's let's!" the other two shouted full with enthusiasm and all three of them charged towards Megure and Takagi.

"Not again...", Conan mumbled under his breath. He followed the three quickly, and they had Ai joining them soon.

Blaze looked up to a chubby man. He was wearing a hat the same color as his trench coat. It didn't take much to understand that he was with the police. The taller and much younger man behind him was supposedly his subordinate. She confirmed this when they showed their leathery badges.

"We are with the police", Inspector Juuzo Megure announced and continued with the same serious voice,"are you the one who first found the body?"

"Hey, Megure-keibu! Be a bit more careful, okay? She just found a dead body. And it wasn't easy -" Sera started scolding Megure, but Blaze stopped her soon. Blaze stood up slowly on her uncertain feet. "It's okay, Masumi. This way, Inspector. Officer",she said calmly and entered the apartment building, leading the two police detectives to the home of the late Moritaka Rin.

She stopped at the door of the house 304 and gathered her courage. She took a deep breath and opened the front door to that horrible house.

"She was here in the office room", Blaze pointed out the open door,"I haven't touched anything and all that's missing should be Moritaka-san", she continued with a monotonic voice.

"Wha-?" she gasped when something or more precisely someone bumped into her knee-caps making her fall down on the dusty floor into the office room.. She looked down and noticed three little children. A girl with a cute yellow hair-band, a smart-looking boy with freckles and a fat one with a hedgehog hairdo.

"Sorry, nee-san", the fat one apologized.

"We didn't mean to hit you!" the freckled one continued.

"So don't be mad at us!" the girl cried.

'Uh, what?'

"She won't probably understand you. She's a foreigner, now isn't she?" a new boy the same age with glasses said calmly behind them. Blaze shrugged and stood up.

"I do understand you, little ones", she said kindly and bent down a bit, obviously amused by their surprised faces. Her mood had gotten a bit better looking at the startled little faces, "but why were you running here? Are you friends of Moritaka-san?" she continued.

"Conan-kun! And the Detective Boys! What are you doing here?" the officer named Takegi or Takaki or something asked with a surprised tone.

'Conan-kun? And the Detective Boys?'

"Ahem!" the Inspector coughed and all of us turned to look at him.

"Could you please leave the crime scene, miss?" Blaze nodded and walked out of the room,"and children... This is _not _the time nor the place to be playing around here, okay?" Megure-keibu yelled at the children. Who by the way had gotten a new member while Blaze wasn't watching the kids. Unlike the others she didn't seem like fully japanese because of her ivory hair color. And somehow not even her eyes weren't so childish. They just missed that certain 'sparkle' that the others had.

"So, the deceased is Moritaka Rin-san, 34 years old, a succesful writer and worked part-time at a nearby cake-shop, huh –?", the inspector read from the report he had gotten from the station and the morgue.

"Okay then, I guess this is most likely to be a homicide because the loop is too high for the victim to reach", he stated after taking a quick look of the crime scene,

"and there are no stools out of place she could've used. Bring the body back from the morgue, so that we can investigate it here on the scene!" Megure-keibu continued and ordered the younger Takagi-keiji. He was correct about the stool since even the only office chair, parked neatly under the desk, was too far from the rope to have been used as help.

"While waiting, I'd like to question you, miss", says he while looking at Blaze under the brim of his beige hat. Blaze nodded and they moved to the living room, where she sat down. Blaze noticed the children peeking behind the corner, obviously going to eavesdrop her statement.

'Oh well, let the children play', she thought, letting it slide.

* * *

"Okay, then miss, let's start with your name, nationality and age", he asked while holding a pen and a note-pad. They looked like a bit of awkward in his hands, so she thought that the officer who had just left for a few was the one usually taking notes.

"My name is Blaze Hawkes, and I am British. I am 17 years old", she answered clearly, because she knew that any suspicious moves right now might not be in her favor later on.

"Judging from your uniform, you're a student at Teitan High?"

"That is correct."

"Then what were you doing here, so far from the school?"

"The deceased Moritaka-san was a pen-pal of my mothers and because my parents are both in Osaka for a week, she made me come here to live in the meantime. I have never met Moritaka-san before and this is my first time ever coming here."

"Why didn't your parents take you with them?"

"They went there for work and I would've been in the way of that."

"Then, when did you come here?"

"At a quarter over six. But no one opened the door so after I went to the landlord for the masterkey the clock was 6.30pm."

"But that doesn't quite add up. We, the police, were called at 7.50pm. What did you do in the meantime?" the experienced inspectors suspicions rose quickly.

"I was watching the TV", she answered straight.

"And never noticed that something might be wrong? The offices door was open, how did you _not_ notice the body?"

"Ah. That door was closed when I first entered the apartment. I opened it when I finally started to search for a ... toilet." That was the first point where Blaze broke her monotonic voice and looked away a bit. She found it a bit embarrassing to talk about such subjects, but to her interrogator that was pretty suspicious.

'Besides, her statements are too straight-forward to be statements from a mere high schooler", Megure-keibu thought to himself while scribbling the conversation on his note-pad.

Conan and Masumi both were eavesdropping on Blazes interrogation and thought the same thing.

'Well, she might've just catched it off some TV crime-programs', the fore-mentioned detectives brushed off that fact. But she wasn't perfectly normal. Either so air-headed that she didn't really understand the situation or that she understood the situation completely and tried her best not to be the Suspect #1.

* * *

After a while Takagi-keiji came back with a person. This mid-forties, brown haired woman was introduced as Yuzuga Akako. She was a colleague and old friend of Moritaka Rin. The reason she had been brought there, to Moritakas home, was because she had been there the night before. And she was the last to see Moritaka.

"I know nothing of this! I just brought her here because we had been drinking! And then I went home and in the morning I called to check up on her, because she hadn't come to work! I'm speaking the truth!" Yuzuga had cried out in the interrogation.

And yes, according to the security camera located outside the apartment showed her to be the last to come in and out. They had also found the phone of Moritaka. It held in a small schedule in which in addition to the party Yuzuga had mentioned, showed her plans for the next week to take care of Blaze and tour her around the town. The inspector then sealed off the possibility of suicide. Usually the people who were planning to suicide didn't make plans dated after their deaths.

But the little chibi-detective wasn't up for this. He sensed something wrong about the case and the deduction so far. He just couldn't place his finger on what it was.


	3. More clues

**(A/N) Hello there! :3 I just realised I forgot to put the AN for the previous chappy ... Oh well, I bet not many actually read these. Moving on, the reason for my slow updating isn't the fact that I'm busy. Honestly speaking, if I wake up early enough, I've got about ten hours on the computer. I just have some writers blocks ****_and_**** I'm a perfectionist :3 Even the last chappy, I re-wrote about six times and still I think it's a bit stiff...**

**Oh,oh! Thank you TheRealDeal44 for your motivating message ^-^**

* * *

"Hey, Sera-san. Isn't there something bothering you about this case?" the four-eyed detective whispered to the tom-boy high schooler.

"Yeah, there is. But it's just a feeling, you know? Like I've got no proof or anything to point at or identify", she answered quietly,  
"I'll go listen to the interrogation so would you go and check the crime scene again? Thanks", she continued and pretty much answered her own question before the boy could answer on his own.  
He sighed and thought;

'I guess there's not much anything else to do here. I wonder what it is. I don't like this feeling, I mean, this _is_ a murder, right?'

"Hey Conan-kun? Is something wrong? You spaced out a bit there", a girl with a cheery yellow headband asked tilting her head.

"Huh? Yeah, I'm fine", he answered quickly, took a pause and continued, " Could you guys go and keep an eye on Hawkes-san?"

"Yeah! Leave it to us!" a fatter and tallest of the five little kids gathered in a ring shouted and left off. Ayumi and Mitsuhiko followed right after him like a shadow. The girl with an auburn hair stayed a bit behind and noted:

"I don't know what you're seeing wrong in that girl, but I can tell you that she doesn't seem like a dangerous persona."

"Yeah, I know", Conan answered and slipped through the yellow tapes that had sealed off the office room.

The corpse had been taken away, but according to what the morgue had reported, her blood had shown a lot of alcohol, but no sleep medicine. Conan had never seen the state of the body which made him a bit annoyed.  
There were no bloodstains on the floor, but the rope hanging from the ceiling-lamp showed a few bloodstains. It was a typical scene and there was nothing out of ordinary for such a hanging murder.  
The detective searched through the room, crawling on the floor under the desk to find anything. But he found nothing. Only dust, old receipts and an old banana skin.

"Hey, Conan-kun! I just remembered one thing! You know, the name", Masumi busted into the room, receiving glares from the police and the forensics on scene.

"The name? Whose name?"

"The name Yuzuga Akako! Have you ever read about that one cold case about a succesful bank robbery twenty or so years ago? It caused quite a bit of commotion _and_ one of the suspects for it was a woman called Kazuyuga Ako.", she boasted on and added;

"Oh, and that's all I catched from the interrogation."

"Kazuyuga ... Ako? Wait, is it an _anagram _to hide your name?" the chibi-detective realised and looked up to the grinning face of the teen-detective. Her smile died a bit when she shared more of her information.

"I think so. The case's been cold for about five years now, but I heard about it from my brother. Kazuyuga Ako disappeared soon after, but apparently never left Japan. It's just that she was never found even though the police knew that she was within the borders of Japan. "

"But we have no proof, it _is _possible that she just has a name similar to that woman on the run."

"I know, but _if_ Moritaka-san was to find out and blackmail her, then wouldn't that create a water-tight motive to kill for Yuzuga or should I say Kazuyuga-san?"

"Well, yeah ... If you think it that way, then it would seem like so. _But_ there are too many buts and ifs in this conversation, you know?"

"Yeah, that's what I'm stuck on too."

The twos conversation was interrupted when they heard Takagi-keiji reporting to the inspector. The two filled with curiosity leaned in to hear a bit better.

"The body showed no marks of struggling nor did it show any other wounds than the one on the neck left from the rope. There wasn't even any skin under the victims fingernails. The examiners think that it was because she was deep asleep due to the huge amounts of alcohol she had consumed a bit earlier, inspector. "

"Anything else?"

"Ah, yes. I don't know how it was relevant, but apparently on she had sat on some dusty surface or similar to the kind before her death since she had dust on her dress."

"Well dusty surfaces aren't really a rare view in this house, but search where it could've been from. And ask from that red-haired foreign girl if she'd heard or seen anything that might do something with the case", Megure-keibu ordered with a grim look under the brim of his hat.

* * *

Meanwhile, the three cheery children swarmed around the flame-haired teen in the living room. The fourth with the auburn hair just stood near her, looking at the teen with a bored look.

"Hey, so where are you from?" the boy with freckles asked her politely.

"I'm from Britain, accurately speaking from London", she answered for the fifth time. Her headache was starting to pound its way back to her poor head.

"Do you like eel on rice?" Genta asked her and the annoyed teen was _so _sure that she had just seen drool leaking from the corner of the fat boys mouth.

'Ew.'

"I ... don't know?" she answered with a nervous smile.

"Why is your hair redder than Ai-chans?" Ayumi asked while running her finger through the silky tips of hair that had escaped her neat braid. Blaze tugged her hair away from her fingers.

"I just liked the color red, so I dyed my hair to its color. There's really no other reason."

"You colored it? Then what color is it really?" the girl asked again tugging at Blazes hair.

Blaze desperately looked through the near window to the darkening evening.

_'_Are they _always_ this noisy? I seriously need a break!'

* * *

Conan went through what he had heard from the older men conversation.

'Sat on dust? There were no clean spots under the table, so she couldn't have been seated there or so. _And_ I've already searched through all the chairs here and the table-top in the kitchen was also wiped clean. Wait. The table-_top._ So she sat on top of something dusty in a place where you wouldn't usually look before she was sent to her end', the boys mind thought feverishly while leaning to the dirty bookshelf.

* * *

The air outside was already starting to feel chilly when the clock stroke 9.00pm. No one walked on the street, but a few passing cars could be heard driving past the tall building. The sky was already coated with a dark blue curtain and painted with loads of white stars.  
Blaze had finally managed to escape from the four children (though she knew that they were constantly observing her) and stood on the windy balcony looking at the sky.  
The girl had gone there to cool off her head, to calm her headache and now that she had fully recovered from the earlier shock from finding the body, she was thinking about what to do next.  
She had no place to go to sleep for a week after all.

'Maybe I could live in my new home alone for a week? Without a key? Yeah, sure. Definitely going to happen. '

She sighed and exited the balcony, sliding the glassed door close behind her. She wandered around a bit, checking to see if anyone needed any help.  
The police were there, in the living room, going through all the clues they had so far. Which wasn't that children were hiding behind a corner stalking her. She gave the kids no second thought and continued on.  
Blaze noticed Masumi also eagerly listening to the police and butting in at times. They didn't seem to mind her new friend, so the redhead thought that the police were used to it. And that what Sonoko had told about Masumi being a detective earlier, was also seemingly true.

Blaze heard some tumbling from the office when she walked closer. When she glanced at the police, they were just continuing their job. Apparently, she was the only one to hear it or at least notice it since no one else seemed to pay no attention. Even the children had suddenly given up on stalking her and had accompanied the officer.  
The short teen-ager walked to the crime scene and carefully peeked inside the room. She saw the earlier black-haired boy with glasses trying to climb up the messy bookshelf.

"Hey, what are you doing? You can't do that", Blaze warned him, obviously startling the poor boy, making him slip and lose his grip.

"Wah- " Conan let out a small yelp from surprise when he fell a bit. Luckily Blaze catched him before he hit the ground and put him on the ground swiftly right after catching him. Sure she had relatively good reflexes, it's just that she wasn't that strong to hold up even a first-grader, just not her perk.

"Gee, what were you doing?" she pouted to the boy.

The boy with glasses studied the teen quickly, ignored her question and asked with a childish smile;

" Could you please try to climb there and tell what's on that shelf, nee-san? Please?"

The teen raised her brow a bit;

"Yeah, sure, I guess I can try to do that, _but_ you have to promise to not to do stuff that might interfere with the police men jobs, 'kay?" she confirmed and after Conan nodded with an I-guess-I-can-try-to-keep-that-promise-for-a-minute smile she decided to do it, failing to note the meaning behind the kids smile.

Blaze eyed the brown shelf a bit. There was about a meter to a half a meter of space between the shelf and the gray ceiling. To her it looked fairly easy to climb up and believe me, Blaze isn't really the best girl to request to climb somewhere. Honestly.  
Stretching her hands and placing them in the shelf, she boosted herself up from the floor.

"Up we go", she mumbled under her breath and peeked on the top of the shelf. The girl saw nothing but a small patch where there had been dust, but otherwise the whole top was covered in deep dust, making her cough a little.  
She dropped down and crouched to the impatient boy, telling him what she had found before shooing him from the room. Again failing to notice the grin that now painted the boys face.

* * *

**(A/N) So? What'cha think?  
Sorry there wasn't much more info, and I just realised how stupid my trick is,  
but hey, at least I tried, right? Please, bear with me and try not to kill me when I write out  
the solution in the next chapter. Please, I beg (_ _)  
**

**Oh yeah, nothing relevant, but something really fun happened today making me write this in a day. Yeah, a day.  
You know, well I guess you actually don't, but I _love_ food. Y'know, cultural food. Such as sashimi or tarte tatins. ( Sashimi is a japanese fish dish and tarte tatin is a french food which is basically just an upsidedown apple-pie.)  
And today, my dad took me to a chinese restaurant, for the first time in _three_ years. I'm very,_ very_ sorry if some of you have never eaten at a chinese, but it was very yummy :3  
I filled myself more than I should =w=**

**Yeah, sorry about blabbering stuff like that, but I _was_ excited you know?  
Okay okay ... I get it...  
But _please_, review! I don't care _what_ you review! Review a dot or another story if you feel like it but something! I want to know who actually reads this :/I won't even consider writing another word, if I don't get at least one review (^_^)/**

**-Ranima-**


	4. Almost got it

**A/N) Well, that review came up quickly :DThank you, Aurameres and dragonkeeper1 !**  
**It's been raining here non-stop so my insp is pretty low ... Aand I've holed up in my room for a day now because of that :/**  
**Well, I'll try my best to write another good chappy, because a promise is a promise :3**

* * *

It was already dark. The clock had struck 9.30pm a few minutes ago and it had started raining.  
The atmosphere inside the apartment was dull and pressing. Except for those few kids who ran around trying to find clues to solve the case in  
Two small children were in the corner of the tidy living room, the boy leaning to the wall and the girl standing near him.

"So, what's with that grim look?" Ai whispered to Conan who was deep in his thoughts.

"I know who the culprit is, but I totally lack a reasonable motive", the boy mumbled back. The teen-detective walked to the two and bent down a bit.

"So who do you think is the culprit?" Masumi asked.  
Conan answered, stating a name and both of the girls eyes widened. The smaller staying silent, but the other stating back:

"But that's impossible! There's no way person would've done this!"  
The boy looked up and calmly said with his serious voice:

"It's possible, I figured out the way for it, but what I lack is the _motive_." Masumi stared at him, going through the situation in her head. She straightened up and finally answered.

"Well, yeah ... I guess I'll go with that, but are you sure?" the shrunken detective nodded and stated:

"I even have a proof for you about that", Conan left for a bit, ignoring the questioning look of the female teen-detective, and walked straight to the other teen in the apartment who was sitting on the ugly red sofa. Which looked like even uglier against her own bright hair color.

"Hey, nee-chan, could you tell Sera-neechan what you found from the top of the shelf?" the shrunken teenager asked with a childish tone and faking slight puppy-eyes. Blaze winked twice going through names in her head.

"Who is 'Sera-neechan'?" the confused teen asked soon. First looking at the stunned boy and then her new classmate who had walked behind the boy.

"Hey, hey, you don't remember me anymore?" Masumi asked with a nervous smile, pointing at her own face.

"Masumi?" she took a pause to recall her full name, "Oh right! Sorry, I only remembered your given name!", the redhead apologised quickly, "but what's with that shelf? I mean, it was dirty and dusty, but partly cleaned from the top?" the girl continued going through the sentence too in her head. She came to a quick conclusion in her head, but shook the thought away even quicker.

The look on Masumis' face had changed to a serious, but mischievous smirk when she too realised the proof, the smaller detective had stated her earlier. Now it all made sense in her intelligent mind. The short-haired teen looked at the younger boy with a smile and nodded.

' I'll take care of the motive, you try to find more fool-proof evidence ', she messaged with her eyes. Hoping to get through the other detective.

Luckily, the boy nodded back, understanding the un-spoken message, then turning to the other teen.

"Nee-chan, could you come to search the house with me?" he said with his well-known child-like voice.

"I'm afraid I can't, little boy. I'm one of the suspects, so I think I should stay put since my situation right now isn't the best possible", Blaze answered to the now pouting youngster, not noticing how the older girl snuck away to listen to the police a bit.

"I guess you're right. But you don't have a motive right? So you should be all right, no?"

"True, but I don't have an alibi either. And I think that the lack of alibi is a bigger thing to affect your suspiciousness than the lack of motive."

"Yeah, but ... ", Conan tried to argue, but couldn't really say anything to win the argument. Especially after the foreign stranger whose name he barely remembered gave him a glare saying to drop the topic.

The boy sighed, cursing how he never won an argument with a girl.

"Fine. I'll go by myself" he mumbled to himself until he remembered who else were there with him. He hurried to the other Detective Boys, who had a minute earlier been joined by Takagi-keiji and Ai.

"Shouldn't you children be heading home already? It's already past nine!" the young officer scolded the energetic children.

"But Takagi-keiji, we already called our parents and told them that we would be staying at Agase-hakases' place tonight!" the children argued back.

"That's no good! Have you asked Agase-hakase already?" he asked with a sigh.

"Uhh ... " the three children looked at each other and soon Genta said :

"Well, Mitsuhiko said that he'd do it... " everyone turned to look at the freckled boy.

"But I thought that Ayumi-chan said she'd do that", Mitsuhiko turned to look at the girl with the yellow hairband.

"But Ai-chan told Ayumi that she'd do it!" Ayumi said back with a sad face. The small first grader hated accusing, but she hated being accused more.  
Ai looked at everyone staring at her and sighed. She flipped out her red phone from the side pocket of her skirt and tapped something. Genta tried to peek at her screen, but stopped when Ai gave him her death glare. After a while of swiping, tapping and staring, Ai finally put on a recorded conversation.

* * *

"Oh no, what about our parents? I need to go to dinner now, but I don't want to leave the investigation now!" Gentas voice echoed from the phone.

"Yeah, me too. We should call our parents and tell them that we're spending the night at Agasa's", this time Mitsuhikos voice.

"I can call him", Ai stated with a bored tone.

"You don't have to, Haibara-san! I can do that for you!" Mitsuhiko said quickly.

"Ayumi wants to call Agasa!" Ayumi spoke up.

"You guys called him the last time! This time it's my turn!" Genta shouted and the record stopped there.

* * *

After the record stopped its message, everyone was staring at Genta. He was laughing nervously and scratching the back of his head while Ai yawned, pleased with her evidence.  
But no one noticed the serious look on the face of the shortest boy with glasses standing right behind Ai.

Quickly the boy hurried away unnoticed to find the Inspector on scene. He soon found the inspector in his signature brim hat.

"Megure-keibu could I _please_ look at the victims' phone?" he asked with his best puppy-eyes and his most innocent tone of voice.  
The experienced inspector just looked at the boy and told him that he shouldn't try to interfere with the policemens' job.  
The shrunken detective glared at him and decided to give up as Conan. But _not_ as Kudou Shinichi.

Conan hid himself behind the corner and pulled out both his "Kudou" phone and voice changer from his jeans pocket.  
He dialed the inspectors number after tuning the voice changer to the correct frequency of his own voice.

"Oh, Kudou-kun! Nice to hear from you!" Megure answered the call, happy to hear of his old friend.

"Thanks inspector, but Conan called me and told me all about the case. It was me who wished for that kid to check up on the victims phone, so if you would so that phone to him?" Conan, or at the moment, Shinichi explained his fake situation to the man in charge briefly.  
He held his breath when he heard the inspector hesitate as of to what to do on the other side. The boy peaked a bit behind the corner, and stole a glance of Megure's troubled expression.  
The elder man sighed and said with a certain voice:

"Okay. I'll go get the phone and then find Conan. But only if you call me of what you found, taking you found what you wanted", Megure negotiated with the stubborn teen-aged detective.

"Got it. Well, I've got to go, but Conan'll inform us both if he found what I was searching for", the shrunken detective answered quickly and hung up on the phone. He then got out of his hiding, wearing a knowing, but childish smile as he approached the inspector who was still stunned on how fast Shinichi had ended his call.  
Sighing, he turned to Conan :

"I'll go get the phone." With that he went to the forensics in Moritakas bedroom, where they had put the victim after she had been brought back from the morgue. Of course, the room was even better sealed than the crime scene since they really didn't want certain little children to go and meddle with the corpse.  
The inspector got the phone soon and handed it to the kid, who was waiting for it with his hands stretched out to receive the object. Though, he of course was wearing gloves, in order to not let any of his own fingerprints get on the phone.

"Don't meddle too much with it, Conan-kun", he ordered, but the child didn't hear him anymore.

* * *

Across the room, unbeknownst to the four-eyed boy and the hatted man, a flame-haired had glued her eyes on the two.  
She saw how the inspector somewhat reluctantly gave the phone to the odd boy, who on the other hand, wore a look that most children only have on Christmas.  
But this time the teen didn't miss the grin that appeared on the boys face as he shuffled through the black phone he had been handed.  
She continued staring, or observing was the verb she herself preferred better, the boy as he dug some earphones from his pockets, plugged it in the phone and then put the other ends to his ears.

'Is he going to listen to music? _Now_?' she thought.

She shrugged the thought away when the mischievous grin on the boys face only widened when he listened to... whatever he was listening to. The inspector had been long gone and the boy was in a far corner where the view of him from his friends had been blocked by a wall. Apparently he thought that no one saw him. But unluckily to him, he had been seen by the one girl who, though she didn't like to show it, had a very curious personality. So curious, that she had had to move away from Britain.

* * *

**[A/N] Sorryy! I know that I took long, but I guess I've got nothing to defend me...**

**Yes, I admit. I was lazy. Though, not many have been checking on this fanfic so it's okay, I guess?**

**Anyway, thanks for those two reviews I've gotten and as an answer to the latter, I can fend myself on that one.  
Yes, Blaze _is_ a boys name, BUT it is also a girls name. Trust me, I have a friend called Blaze (and she's a girl) and if you check on , you can find the name Blaze from the girls names under the letter B.  
**

**And yes, this chapter is a bit short, but I'll try to make it up to you in the next one! Don't hate me if I don't make _every_ chapter a 2,000 word one D:**

**Thanks for reading, please review since it does boost my motivation pretty much ( unless it's negative) and uh, see you next chapter? I'll present you the solution in it too and if I can stuff it in, I guess I could unravel our MC's past a bit. c;  
**

**Maybe, who knows,**

**-Ranima-**


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